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Certain uncomfortable international treaties have expired allowing us to bring you a WEEKEND PAINT SALE that's sure to enrage the Bavarian anti-paint lobby. It's going on now inside Team Fortress 2. During this New Year's weekend you can get most hat paints for half off, black and white paint is available on the store for a limited time, and name tags and description tags are also on sale!

Their dedication to the Team Fortress 2 community makes Valve's online shooter a blast.

Online shooters don’t evolve. They land on your hard drive, and if there’s a bug, or a new map, or a new gun, the developers or publishers might stick out an update. But they are as is, and they’ll eventually tire me out.

This was how I expected it to be when Team Fortress 2 launched in October 2007. And back then, at first glance, it was just a brilliant shooter. A few maps, nine classes, lots of fun, and I’d be done with it in six months. Even as I was enjoying playing the Spy, the invisible weakling capable of terrorising teams only when their backs were turned, I was wondering what game was next.

Make the TeamAs it turns out, “next” was TF2. In January 2008, Valve showed me the new game mode, Payload, and the initial designs for the Medic update. As much as they’d perfected the game to the point where they were happy to release it, millions of people playing it had exposed weaknesses in their impeccable design.

This is why I still play Team Fortress 2. Valve’s unhappiness with their finished game means I’m never more than a couple of months away from a new reason to play, an extra gun to gain, a different map to explore. The classes have evolved: The Spy is still a weakling, but a new watch allows me to stay invisible as long as I need to. A new knife steals the disguise of the player I just stabbed. A Fez makes me ultra dapper. Every class has a similar story: the Demoman can be a grenade spamming death machine, or a head-lopping front-line warrior. The Sniper’s bow encourages him to wander the map, string drawn back, ready to one-hit-kill jerks.

The announcements of these updates are events in themselves. Everything Valve does has to be entertaining, including creating week-long reveals of what they’ve been working on. They’ve hid the Spy’s update in the Sniper update, having him slowly uncloak on the webpage; they set the Demoman and Soldier to war with each other, battling for the highest kill count.New groundValve have changed the game so much, introducing crafting and a microeconomy, that it’s no longer just an online shooter: it’s a place where they experiment with the community, taking the game to places that you could never have imagined when it launched. Every change brings new life, new challenges to overcome if they’ve updated a class you don’t play. It’s now full of gnarly little encounters: Snipers were given a shield that protects them from a Spy’s backstab, so I got proficient with the Spy’s powerful Ambassador for headshots. Demomen now have a speed boost that they can use to charge into battle with their giant sword, but a Pyro’s airblast can frustrate the raging Scotsman by knocking him back the way he came from.

Which has resulted in my favourite game of the past three years, and nothing being able to topple it this year. I play mostly on the PC Gamer TF2 server. It’s a pub, but with plenty of regulars. When we started, 2Fort was where we spent most of our time. Now it’s the various payload maps that make up the most popular battlegrounds, Heavies can heal themselves; Scouts are hitting people with fish; people are trading weapons and hats. I’ve pushed that bomb cart countless miles, ridden on top of it pulling dramatic poses; I’ve dived in behind it as it was about to tip into a hole full of explosive barrels, stabbing everyone. I’ve flailed, missed my stabs, ran away from angry Pyros into a sentry gun’s range, raging as the kill cam zooms in to show a dancing Engi behind his little nest.

I’m there after every update, and as long as Valve keep updating it, I think I’ll keep coming back.

How I do love the holiday season. A time of year that makes the sweet things in life seem so much the sweeter. A time when ignoring the mournful cries of a litter of famished puppies provides the deep satisfaction of labored accomplishment. A time when delivering a sharp kick to the exposed shin of a desperate beggar takes on a certain character of charity. A time when sending one's witless minions repeatedly to their deaths at the hands of their equally witless enemies provides an unrivaled and noble joy.

So it is that in a fit of holiday induced discomposure I requested that Mr. Hale increase his shipments of weapons and equipment for exactly one week. Do not, my dear reader, interpret this as a sign of approval. Do not mistake me for thinking you worthy of this gift. I am merely attempting to ensure that you are properly equipped for the duties that you are required to fulfill as detailed in the contract that each of you signed. There are control points that need capturing, intelligence that needs recovering, and hats to be secured.

Do we need to be drawn into our games, or can we just play and enjoy? That's the question pondered by commenter RAMeyer19 in today's installment of Speak-Up on Kotaku.

Why in video games is "immersion" so often quoted as an important factor that a game has or lacks? Can I not love playing Pac-Man without needing to feel that I am Pac-Man?

Honestly, Half-Life 2, often cited as the peak of immersion in modern games, more often than not had me testing boundaries as opposed to feeling immersed. How come I can smash some things with a crow bar and they'll break, but not others? Why can't I shoot supporting character Alyx in the face but I can shoot and kill a mutated monster? If Valve was trying to make the player feel a part of the Half-Life universe through their rigidly first-person design how come I am so constantly questioning the rules and limits of what I can do, only to be constantly reminded that I am indeed, only playing as Gordon Freeman who can single-handedly save humanity from an alien race, but can't kill one measly old scientist with an assault rifle?

I think this is a big question that's important to address in modern game culture. Francois Laramée said, "All forms of entertainment strive to create suspension of disbelief, a state in which the player's mind forgets that it is being subjected to entertainment and instead accepts what it perceives as reality." According to this standard, one would assume that a piece of entertainment would do everything in its power to reach this goal. But look at how effective games like Metal Gear Solid are when they break the fourth wall.

Maybe it's because interesting meta-communicative moments, like those in Metal Gear, are more important to meaningful gameplay than "immersion" in the classical narrative sense. To me at least, applying Laramée's theory of immersion to games implies a false sense of simplicity on the medium as a whole.

I think we should look beyond "immersion," the term that's become such an industry buzz-word, and try to focus on the more subtle complexities that make a game truly interesting.

And yeah, sorry for the long post, but if you made it this far I'd love to hear what you think.

About Speak-Up on Kotaku: Our readers have a lot to say, and sometimes what they have to say has nothing to do with the stories we run. That's why we have that little box on the front page of Kotaku. You know, the one with "Got something to say?" written in it? That's the place to post anecdotes, photos, game tips and hints, and anything you want to share with Kotaku at large. Just make sure to include #speakup in your comment so we can find it. Every weekday we'll pull one of the best #speakup posts we can find and highlight it here.

Updates to Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Source, Day of Defeat: Source and Half-Life 2: Deathmatch have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Source Engine Changes (CS:S, DoD:S, TF2, HL2:DM)

Fixed an engine crash caused by too many precached models in some community maps.

Day of Defeat: Source

Fixed an exploit where clients could prevent weapons from recoiling properly.

Team Fortress 2

Added several crafting recipes for new weapons.

Added a ton of items to the store.

Added a ton of items to the random drop list.

The following hats are now paintable or have had their paintability improved: Pyromancer's Mask, Detective Noir, Madame Dixie, Buckaroos Hat, German Gonzila, Flipped Trilby, Coupe D'isaster

Fixed a spelling error on the "Pyromancer's Mask".

Corrected the name of the "Claidheamh Mòr" to the joy of our Celtic players.

Made "Le Party Phantom" a misc slot item.

Fixed a client crash caused by custom stats panels.

Fixed a bug where some new items weren't being dropped correctly.

Removed displaying the top 10 players in the leaderboard if you have never won a duel.

Updated the localization files.

Fixed a regression in Tournament Mode item whitelists.

Also added "mp_tournament_whitelist", a convar that allows servers to specify a whitelist file to use.

The Steam Christmas sale has launched, kicking off a series of deals that will throw ridiculous bargains at us every day from now until the new year. As well as the daily deals there's a selection of developer and publisher packs offering as much as 86% off entire game catalogues. Read on for more on the spectacular deals on offer.

Today's sales have the rock solid platformer, Super Meat Boy going at 75% off, Fallout 3 at 33% off, the excellent action RPG, Titan Quest at 75% off. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is also on sale at a third of its normal price.

Every day one of the new offers will be eligible for a special holiday bonus. The discount on these games will increase if you own a certain game. For example, today's special deal is on Portal. It's 75% off everyone, but if you own Half Life 2, you'll get an extra 10% off.

The huge game packs and publisher catalogue deals will be available from now until January 2nd, and offer the biggest savings. The THQ pack is currently offering 21 THQ games for the price of one, and contains gems like Company of Heroes, Stalker, Dawn of War and Dawn of War 2. The Square Enix & Eidos bundle is also another great deal at 86% off, and that includes Batman: Arkham Asylum, Deus Ex, the Hitman series, Just Cause 2 and much more.

You'll find the full list deals listed on Steam. What will you be buying?

The Team Fortress 2 Christmas event launched this weekend giving everyone a chance to celebrate Christmas in true Team Fortress style. The update adds a new medieval, melee-only map and a series of mysterious festive crates that can be unlocked to reveal new items, which are also available to buy now in the Mann Co store. It's all in the spirit of Australian Christmas. What the hell is Australian Christmas? Read on for details, and an overview of the new items.

It's all explained on the official Team Fortress 2 blog. Australian Christmas seems to be an excuse for everyone to meet up in a castle and bash each other. The new arena is a control point map is set in the ramparts of a medieval fortress. The catch is that everyone playing has to use melee weapons. The frenzied scenes of players running in small circles trying to decapitate each other are only improved by the the addition of lordly language to everyone's text chat. Verily, 'tis hilarious.

The update adds three new item sets for the Heavy, the Medic and the Demoman. You'll find the stats of each item listed below. All the Christmas items are for sale in one £19.99 bundle, or you can pay £29.99 and get the Christmas items bundled in with the Polycount Pack. Below you'll find an overview of the new items along with descriptions of their special abilities.MedicAmputator

A medieval bonesaw On taunt, applies a healing effect to all nearby allies

Crusader's Crossbow

A medigun mounted onto a crossbow stock Fires bolts that heal team mates and deal damage based on the distance to the target

A stick bomb that is also a melee weapon "a sober person would throw it" No random critical hits

Scotch Bonnet

Riot gear helmet

Item Set Bonus

+10% fire damage resistance on wearer

A series of festive crates will also be dropping from now until new year. To open these crates you'll need to buy a festive key from the Mann Co store for £1.99. The crates will contain a random surprise, so far people have reported receiving rakes, candy canes and occasionally, one of the new Christmas weapons. The festive crates will disappear on December 31st. All festive keys will revert to ordinary keys come new year's day.

For more Team Fortress 2 Christmas happenings check out the Killing Floor goodies that were recently added. Have you played the new map? Let us know what you think.